A NEWLY appointed Tanzania Premier League Board (TPLB) Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Almasi Kasongo, will have a responsibility to restore referees’ confidence.
The Tanzania Football Federation (TFF) General Secretary, Wilfred Kidao confirmed yesterday that Kasongo has been appointed TPLB new CEO. He takes over from Boniface Wambura, whose term had elapsed.
Kassongo listed his priorities that he will administer during his leadership that will include; placing emphasis on club licensing (Infrastructure, Administration, Finance, and Legal criteria), revenue generation, improve league management and public relations.
Most pundits thinks that Kasongo, who has good history in football circles including being Chairman of the Dar es Salaam Regional Football Association (DRFA) will have to take the huge responsibility in ensuring referees challenges are solved hence build their confidence to correctly officiating league games.
It is clear that at the moment, the match officials have lost confidence based on wave of mistakes some of them have been committing and kind of punishment imposed against them.
As a result, fear has taken its toll as mistakes in officiating league matches continue to happen as proved on Friday when Simba were denied a clear goal against JKT Tanzania and yesterday when Yanga were denied a clear penalty.
In fact, Kidao confirmed about the fear, saying; “Great pressure is being placed on the match officials and this week alone, at least seven referees have asked not to be drawn in any match.
“If you look at the seven referees who have requested not to be drafted in officiating league matches, they have no wage demands and have not faced any problems in any of the matches they officiated,” he insisted.
He also added that refereeing challenges are not only being reflected in Tanzanian football but many other parts of Africa and the world in general.
He said this is especially in games that are considered to involve teams with strong background of being rivals.
“It is a challenge not only for Tanzania and Africa but the world as a whole…this is why in Europe they came up with Goal Line Technology and Video Assistant Referee (VAR),” he pointed out.
For instance, he said, recently Al Ahly and Zamalek from Egypt made a request to Egyptian Football body’s Committee of referees to appoint foreign referees to officiate their derby but the request was rejected.
However, Kidao insisted that the Federation will continue to work closely with referees and ensure they mitigate mistakes, saying this will be done through frequent trainings, rewards and punishment where due and the most important to ensure that the officials are well paid to discourage them from engaging into tampering or influencing match results.
